A nice Central Coast cruise

We stayed Monday night at a friend's place up in in Valentine, not far from the Belmont Hospital, about 15km south of Newcastle. We had a very pleasant evening, including a number of beers and red wines.

It was nice to finally enjoy an unrestricted sleep-in on Tuesday morning, and we finally arose a bit after 8. I was in two minds about running, but figured that there wasn't much else to do. I wasn't particularly hungover, and once I got warmed up I found I was rolling along at around 4:45 per km pace pretty comfortably, running down Croudace Bay Road into Belmont (including leaning at about a 20 degree angle into the southerly wind coming off the lake, which I wouldn't rate as a particularly warm wind), running a couple of laps of the baseball field there, and heading back. I was able to pick the pace up coming back despite the hill. Managed 12.4km in 57:50 and felt good for the hit-out. I seem to have picked a bit of a head cold in the last couple of days, but it doesn't seem to be overly worrying me - just a bit snotty....

We got home around 1:30pm, and I'd entertained thoughts of running in the afternoon, but a combination of yardwork and and enthralling final session of play in the cricket put paid to that.

Back out tomorrow for the increasingly traditional Wednesday morning 30+km run....